Perrin Lathrop

Perrin M. Lathrop received her PhD from the Department of Art & Archaeology at Princeton University in 2021, where she also earned a Graduate Certificate in African American Studies. Her research and teaching explore the interlocking intellectual histories and networks of nationalism, Pan-Africanism and modernism that informed art produced under the strictures of colonialism in Africa. This work has been supported by Princeton, the Smithsonian, the Paul Mellon Centre and the Warhol Foundation and has appeared in African Arts, the Journal of African History, and Savvy Journal and in volumes produced by the Newark Museum, the Princeton University Art Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, Harvard University, Phaidon and Skira. An essay based on her dissertation research has been published in Akinọla Laṣekan: Cartooning, Art, and Nationalism at the Dawn of a New Nigeria, edited by dele jegede and Aderonke Adesanya (Bookcraft Nigeria 2020), the first monograph dedicated to the pioneering modern Nigerian artist Akinọla Laṣekan. Perrin is co-curator of the traveling exhibition African Modernism in America, 1947-1967 with Fisk University Galleries and the American Federation of Arts (link https://www.amfedarts.org/african-modernism-in-america-1947-1967/ ). Opening in Fall 2022, the show has been awarded grants from the Warhol Foundation, the Sotheby’s Prize and the National Endowment for the Arts. As the University of Maryland-Phillips Collection Postdoctoral Fellow in Modern and Contemporary Art History for the 2021-22 academic year, she will focus on research and writing for this exhibition and its catalogue and teach a related course in the Spring 2022 semester.